It's now generally thought to have been far from the best picture of its year. The same was true of Titanic even before it won all those awards. Both were big box office hits, too. (And isn't Gone With the Wind, a lousy film, still the all-time champ, when box office is adjusted for inflation?) <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> We're discussingThe Lord of the Rings in the Reading Room, Oct. 15, 2007 - Mar. 22, 2009!

Great thread, and now I'm curious to know about FIVE years ago...
[In reply to]

Can't Post

That is ... when TTT was released. Because I want to know -- all you poor souls that saw FOTR in the theaters, and then had to wait an entire year to see TTT - how did you manage the wait? By the next year, were you in more of a frenzy of anticipation for TTT than you had been for FOTR?

I developed a true loathing for Charlton Heston. But that's fodder for another thread, a discussion I don't want to have. But the movie itself, yes, it moved me greatly and I did love it.

Not so with Titanic, I'm afraid.

And I don't think it fair to "look back" and decide a movie is not the best of the year for a year long gone by. I think current mood of the voters enters in to that, for good or ill. I was just watching Chariots of Fire a few days ago, a movie that I love, and thinking that if it were released today (even with the same competition) it would never win. For Gondor!

It's now generally thought to have been far from the best picture of its year.

I'm not sure where you're getting that from. The Oscars were just one of countless organizations that gave it best film of the year. It's still ranked in the top 5 of imdb's database, and still ranked in the 90's percentiles on Rotten Tomatoes.

Peter added a 5-minute preview for TTT to the end of FOTR, and there were lots of theaters still showing FOTR that many months after it was released in December. We were all on edge waiting for that, and I took the day off so I could see the first showing at noon, then I saw it again that day at the IMAX theater.

We measured time in increments. First it was the awards season, and the first TORN Oscar party. Many of us learned about the whole awards process, how the guilds nominate the categories except Best Picture for Oscars, and that the guild awards are often precursors. We watched the BAFTAs, many of us for the first time and cheered on "our" movie. We were following the editing and re-shooting progress as much as possible, speculating about the extra scenes in the extended edition. Then the DVDs were released, with the extended scenes and all the wonderful extra features.

And of course we were arguing about FOTR, and speculating about what was going to be in TTT. We got to know John Noble and David Wenham, Miranda Otto, Karl Urban and Bernard Hill.

The best thing about waiting for TTT, for most of us, was that our worry that the movie would crash and burn was mostly gone and we could focus on our excitement. For FOTR, those of us who loved the books were awaiting the movies with an equal mixutre of anticipation and trepidation. We were exhilirated at what we were hearing, but still terrified it would be awful. For TTT, most of what we felt was joy.

I wouldn't trade all that time waiting for the next movie for anything. It was a spectacular ride.

Each cloak was fastened about the neck with a brooch like a green leaf veined with silver. `Are these magic cloaks?' asked Pippin, looking at them with wonder. `I do not know what you mean by that,' answered the leader of the Elves.

A book that was later a documentary survey of representations of homosexuality in Hollywood films; I saw but did not read it. Gore Vidal did a little script work on Ben-Hur, and offers an amusing interpretatoin of one scene with Heston. (I later saw Heston on a talk show, amicably arguing that Vidal was at least exaggerating his role in the filmmaking; and in this context it would be worth noting that Heston once wrote in praise of The Crying Game, in particular of Jaye Davidson's performance.)

I haven't actually seen Ben-Hur, in either of its two feature film versions. I liked some of Titanic, but would have given the Oscar to The Full Monty that year. Or Welcome to Sarajevo or Hana-bi, had either been nominated.

Chariots of Fire was a surprise winner back in April 1982. As I recall, Siskel and Ebert predicted that the winner would be Reds and Raiders of the Lost Ark, respectively, even though Chariots of Fire was number two on Ebert's list, following only My Dinner With André. (Curiously, the film that Ebert ranked third that year he has since put on his top ten list of all time: Errol Morris' documentary, Gates of Heaven.) Chariots of Fire didn't appear on Siskel's list; he had Ragtime first and My Dinner With André second. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> We're discussingThe Lord of the Rings in the Reading Room, Oct. 15, 2007 - Mar. 22, 2009!

"Anatomy of a Murder", "Fires on the Plain", "Floating Weeds", "The Four Hundred Blows"...
[In reply to]

Can't Post

Hiroshima mon amour, The Human Condition, Nazarin, North by Northwest, and Some Like It Hot, at least, all appear more regularly on all-time ten best lists than does Ben-Hur (which almost never does). Most film history books are dismissive. I haven't seen most of these films, but I can say that Ben-Hur could at least not be a better movie than either The Four Hundred Blows or North by Northwest. I have mixed feelings about Some Like It Hot, and find Floating Weeds (one of Ebert's favorites) to be lesser Ozu: see Early Summer (1953) instead. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> We're discussingThe Lord of the Rings in the Reading Room, Oct. 15, 2007 - Mar. 22, 2009!

I stopped taking these two guys seriously sometime after 1996. Ebert in particular is little better than an egg-suck dog....for sale to the highest bidder. My favorite expression for him right now, in fact, is "running dog of New Line." That expression was (I believe) Chairman Mao's invention, and I really never knew what it really meant until I read some of his reviews this year, and this one for TGC took the cake.

As for our continuing debate over the flaws or non-flaws of the films....this issue will not only never die but escalate ten-fold once The Hobbit is announced.

For better or worse, Brigand, like I've said a million times, this is Hollywood we are dealing with here. The only way you will sacrifice a potential onscreen battle for a song in an American-produced film is, well, never. Even Coppola thought it wise to throw in the dancing Playboy Bunnies into Apocolyse Now (with full-blown sex scenes under preposterous circumstances, in the origional uncut version) . Correct me if I;m wrong but I very much doubt there was a love scene in Heart of Darkness, the classic novel AN was not so loosely based on. The director knew the cultural mindset of his audience.

The only way LOTR would have suited your tastes is if it was made by the likes of, say, Sergei Eisenstein. Which would have been just as good in its way--but you would have had to get into a totally different mindframe to watch it. Russian audiences are still unique in "Western" culture (if such a term may be used in an artistic sense) in that they still do prefer the poetry over the action, and even with Western culture (slightly) penetrating this past decade and half, if he were alive today, I think he would have made War And Peace the same way.

BTW, if anyone is interested there are some great film clips of the "War And Peace:" films...you have to Google Eisenstein or "War And Peace--Films" to get to them.

Patty noted Ebert/Roeper's comment that winning eleven Oscars might only indicate "respect" not "love" for a film, a la Titanic and Ben-Hur; she responded by pointing out the LotR films' significant box office earnings. I replied by observing that not only had Titanic and Ben-Hur won Oscars, but they had both been very successful financially, yet like other award-winning moneymakers, neither was held in the highest of esteem nowadays. I wrote: "Do you love Ben-Hur? It's now generally thought to have been far from the best picture of its year." As you responded to that comment, I assumed you too were referring to Ben-Hur, and so I showed, as you requested, where I was "getting that from". (See what I said about losing one's bearings in the lower reaches of a discussion?)

I have no doubt that a mere four-to-six years after the release of LotR that it still holds a firm place on the various critical rankings, and may very well continue to do so forever. It doesn't help my case (yet) that relatively few people see older films. Does The Shawshank Redemption continue to hold its bizarrely high position on the IMDb lists? That was a case where neither box office nor awards had predictive power concerning audience appeal, at least ten years on.

As for the best film of 2003, I'd say maybe it was Finding Nemo or Shattered Glass or Touching the Void. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> We're discussingThe Lord of the Rings in the Reading Room, Oct. 15, 2007 - Mar. 22, 2009!

From May until early August, I watched FOTR 7 times in my neighborhood theater. (I saw it twice in the previous December) Then I bought the DVD and watched all of the fight sequences in slow-motion. Then I anxiously waited for December. I had a rip roaring online community to wait with which ramped the excitement even more.

I can remember how they released a series of trailers for TTT the week before the movie came out and each one of them showed a few seconds more of footage. Often, we'd be given a heads up about when and where they would appear (on TV) so we'd all be waiting for them. About the 3rd of 4th one released, they suddenly showed the Ents striding across the land towards Isengard (it was the first time we'd had more than that glimpse of Treebeard waking up) and I spontaneously stood up and screamed. That's how excited I was.

I've long wanted to see it, but alas, I could not spare that many hours. Eisenstein having died in 1948, I guess it was not him you meant? I really like Potemkin (1925).

You guess correctly that Conrad did not include sex scenes in Heart of Darkness. On the other hand, Apocalypse Now could hardly be considered a literal-minded adaptation of that book, beginning with the change in setting from the Congo c. 1890 to Vietnam c. 1970.

Quote

I stopped taking these two guys seriously sometime after 1996.

Roeper, of course, joined Ebert only many months after Siskel's death in early 1999.

Quote

Ebert in particular is little better than an egg-suck dog....for sale to the highest bidder.

I have no reason to believe that. His opinions, often as I disagree with him, seem to be his own. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> We're discussingThe Lord of the Rings in the Reading Room, Oct. 15, 2007 - Mar. 22, 2009!

I was thinking of a poster who used to post on the then "Oscarwatch"--I don't remember who it was, and I don't go there now. But she felt the need to constantly defend "A Beautiful Mind" and just didn't "get" FotR. She went back to see it, after so many more on Oscarwatch loved it so fiercely, and ended up being one of the biggest LotR fans on those message boards. She said she was so glad she had come to love it, because she would have missed a "spectacular ride", her exact words. For Gondor!

Sergei Bondarchuk. I get them mixed up all the time. I mean, not the films of course but the directors. (Battleship Potemkin is one of the alltime greats--just for the Odessa Steps sequence alone).

Let me get that link for you NE Brigand. May I warn you, you'll need to set aside some time to watch them. There are 4 films and for each one there are 5 or 6 clips that are ten minutes long.

Interestingly, Bondarchuk also stars in the film. How he manged to direct this, esp the battle scenes with literally tens of thousands of extras, is incredible. What I always loved the most about this masterpiece was Natasha Rostovya....she puts Audrey Hepburn in the shade. The Hunt Sequence, which ends with her winning the love of the peasants by dancing in the hunting lodge, is one of the great magical scenes of all time, on SO many levels. Back in a minute....

I know where to look for it on the screen, and I know which appendix it still appears in, but I can't see it for love nor money.

Mind you I used to be able to spot Frodo, Sam and Gollum in the long shot of the Dead Marshes, but on the television screen they're utterly lost to me. Maybe I'm just blind. Celebrimbor: "Pretty rings..." Dwarves: "Pretty rings..." Men: "Pretty rings..." Sauron: "Mine's better."

"Ah, how ironic, the addictive qualities of Sauron’s master weapon led to its own destruction. Which just goes to show, kids - if you want two small and noble souls to succeed on a mission of dire importance... send an evil-minded b*****d with them too." - Gandalf's Diaries, final par, by Ufthak.

a couple of months before TTT was released. I knew only that it had something to do with Faramir, but I kept away from those threads because I wanted to be spoiler-free for the movie - but I was dying to know what it was all about.

"Ah, how ironic, the addictive qualities of Sauron’s master weapon led to its own destruction. Which just goes to show, kids - if you want two small and noble souls to succeed on a mission of dire importance... send an evil-minded b*****d with them too." - Gandalf's Diaries, final par, by Ufthak.

..I was upset with how Jackson had likewise beatified Sam....how Faramir and Sam's characters had switched. How in the film, Faramir is the one tempted by the Ring and Sam never is. I would have liked to see Sam's "visions" of Mordor turned into a garden of Paradise. But no. However I have learned to live with this as Faramir goes through a character arc, and if PJ sees Sam as his alter ego, just as Tolkien did with Faramir, that's OK.

I have tried to find the Google link to the War And Peace Film clips, Brigand, but couldn't find it. So I went to YouTube.

To find them, go to YouTube and type Sergei Bondarchuk's "War And Peace" in the search engine.

And the first clip is actually the one I was talking about. I call it the "Portrait of Mother Russia As a Young Girl" scene. You could write a dissertation on this scene, it works on SO many levels. The other clips are unfortunately not in order. But they'll give you a taste of the film. You'll have to follow the pages on the right to watch them all.

As for my personal Top 10--they are (not in order)

Metropolis Silence of the Lambs (as a femenist polemic, it's fantastic) Pinocchio (still Disney's greatest, though Bambi is close behind and Beauty And the Beast will grow in importance over time) Bondarchuk's War And Peace Cocteau's Beauty And The Beast Ken Burns's "The Civil War" (the greatest 19th-century film never made) The Snake Pit Pather Panchali All Quiet On the Western Front The Battle of Algiers Lawrence of Arabia LOTR Okay, that's 12, with the Star Wars Saga (as one story) honorable mention...yikes, this is murderously difficult, can I make it my Top 20?:)

As to Oscars and greatness, I think LOTR's official greatness in film history will depend on American historians tastes of cinema. Will they make an exception for LOTr as they do now, or will the film version of LOTR follow the critical tastes of LOTR the books. I think LOTR the films will live on, if only b/c they are a trilogy....and one film which is greater than the sum of its parts, otherwise they'd follow Ben Hur and Titanic.

As to Ben Hur....I've learned to seperate the artist from the politics. His National Rifle Association ties and politics don't pervent me from watching something he made 50 yrs ago. If that had been filmed today however.....

And as for Finding Nemo..that's actually a really great film. It isn't better than ROTK of course (!!!) but it's almost as good. I think it deserved a BP nomination. But as The Academy purposely created the Best Animated Picture category in the mid 90's to ghettoize animated films b/c the Screen Actors Guild was rightly afraid of films without actors getting the best screenplays, supposedly saving money on films by not using "expensive": actors, etc....it's a shame.

I posted the review to give us some discussion fodder, since many of our regular features (SCOD, GOLD, etc) are on a break.

It seems to have worked! We haven't had a good point/counterpoint like this on this board for awhile -- please, take a bow, all of you who made this a very interesting discussion. I didn't have time to do more than get things started, but glad so many of you did. Weaver

is the dust that's kicked by the car driving. You do see a very blurred outline, but it's mostly the dust that's the clue. It's moving much too fast to be anything but a car, and it has a clearly defined beginning point that moves across the screen, so you know it's not just wind kicking up the dust.

Each cloak was fastened about the neck with a brooch like a green leaf veined with silver. `Are these magic cloaks?' asked Pippin, looking at them with wonder. `I do not know what you mean by that,' answered the leader of the Elves.

although I can't remember the name, either. She was a fierce defender of "A Beautiful Mind" and it was so great to see her finally "get" FOTR. She immediately dove into the books, too.

Each cloak was fastened about the neck with a brooch like a green leaf veined with silver. `Are these magic cloaks?' asked Pippin, looking at them with wonder. `I do not know what you mean by that,' answered the leader of the Elves.

when Nim started the rumor that David Wenham had quit the movie because he didn't like how his character was developed? That actually gained some traction and started a mini-buzz on the internet.

Each cloak was fastened about the neck with a brooch like a green leaf veined with silver. `Are these magic cloaks?' asked Pippin, looking at them with wonder. `I do not know what you mean by that,' answered the leader of the Elves.